Languages and language families

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[edit] Major Language Families (grouped geographically without regard to inter-family relationship)

In the following, each "bulleted" item is a known language family. The geographic headings over them are meant solely as a tool for grouping families into collections more comprehensible than an unstructured list of the dozen or two of independent families. Geographic relationship is convenient for that purpose, but these headings are not a suggestion of any "super-families" phylogenetically relating the families named.

[edit] Families of Africa and Southwest Asia

[edit] Families of Europe, and North Asia, West Asia, and South Asia

[edit] Families of East Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific

[edit] Families of the Americas

[edit] Proposed Language Super-Families

[edit] Creole languages, Pidgins, and Trade languages

[edit] Isolate languages

Isolate languages share no apparent traits with any known language family.

  • Basque (The language of the Basques, people of unknown origin inhabiting the western Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay in France and Spain.)
  • Burushaski
  • Ainu
  • Vascan

[edit] Sign languages

[edit] Other Natural Languages of Special Interest

[edit] Artificial Languages

Besides the above languages that have arisen spontaneously out of the capability for vocal communication, there are also languages that share many of their important properties.

[edit] See also

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